The four major periods in life of a student away from home

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Are you planning to study and live in another country far away from your home country and family and friends? Or are you already abroad pursuing your Masters or PhD degrees or perhaps doing an Internship?

If your answer to any of the questions above was ‘yes’ then this post will be very helpful for you today. Let me tell you one thing before we get started. These all 4 tips come from my own personal experience of living in Dubai back in 2005-2007 about how the four major periods in life of a student defines him.

I hope you will find at least one useful actionable tip to take away with you and make your life abroad more enjoyable, positive and of course productive and focused.

1. Honey Month Period

It is the period when you feel yourself like a tourist who came to place X to enjoy him/herself initially forgetting about his/her future goals and the hard work that is waiting. You are happy that you have finally arrived in X city after so many hassles with your documentations, exams, scholarship interviews, visa, medical examinations, airplane-ticket, hotel room booking and etc. You feel like now you are in the right place and your life is set to take off very soon.

2. Frustration Period

Yes! very soon usually after one month you wake up and start realizing that good days are ending and something strange is going on. You feel like going back home but you can’t do it because you are to complete your studies during the period of two years. When you were back in your home country you were happy that you will get a visa to X country for two years. But now you seem to dislike it. Don’t worry … it is very normal and healthy to feel homesick and start disliking things and people around yourself when you are abroad. It happens with almost everyone. My advice is in the next line.

3. Understanding Period

Try to be more open minded and welcoming to new things, ideas, people, cultures and way of life and thinking. That’s the beauty of studying abroad, otherwise why on earth have you come to country X? Try to hang out with as many people as possible. If you know more than your foreign friends, try to be super generous and share your knowledge with them. When I lived in Dubai I made lots of friends from India, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Philippines, Mauricio’s, Pakistan, China, Japan, South Africa, UK and other countries mainly because I shared my knowledge of Russian and English and they shared their expertise in things they were good at.

4. To be or Not to Be. Period

After all of the above mentioned stages, you will have to take time and reflect on yourself. Ask yourself whether you are becoming a happy member of that new community you are in or not. If you say ‘yes’ and conclude that you are happy to be there, then you stay in that country. If you think you still miss your home country a lot and that you even count every single hour spent in the city X, then you are more like to finalize your journey or in the worst scenario give up everything and come back home.